121–130 of 178 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, how could they trust you weren't a fraudster from a competing product?
Because they actually purchased the product?
This looks more like people new to the internet discovering what everyone else already knew: You can't trust strangers on the internet. You never could. If anything the internet nowadays is a more regulated, safer place than it used to be. The "wild west" internet of old now only endures in certain corners. It's no longer synonymous with the thing itself. Posting with your full name instead of anonymously or pseudony…
This goes beyond trust, I think. The social structures of Internet communities are very different from those those in real life, and I'm highly disturbed when people try to transplant IRL social norms to the Internet thoughtlessly. This is where we get bone-headed ideas like the real-names policy for "the Internet". Now, I am not discounting that there is actually toxic, horrific harassment that goes on the Internet.…
But a lot of it is not, and a fair number of people do become indoctrinated to alt-right ways of thinking through that sort of medium, some of them going as far as murder.
I'm not saying "Ban this sick filth!" but I am increasingly of the opinion that such places shouldn't just be left to fester, because the genuinely twisted do go there, and they recruit, and that has real world consequences.
If I'm not mis-remembering, there's an interesting section in Dawkins' The Selfish Gene about cooperative grooming behavior (I think it was in some sort of water fowl) and how the birds deal with cheating behavior (individuals that accept grooming without reciprocating). My takeaway was roughly: Any exchange of value based on trust is exploitable. The simplest cure is excluding the exploiter, but this doesn't scale w…
Trust is a resource and is (only) used up if exploited. There are countless examples how this happened on the net. Remember the latest disclaimer you agreed to and consequently had your data stolen or abused? Don't even get me started on penis enlargement spam.
Then additionally, people pretending to have identified the abusers very frequently become the largest abusers themselves.
Lastly, trust needs room to grow, so trying to enforce it through surveillance and advertising will only strengthen the individuals ego. So...
> can greatly improve how well this scales, but this behavior also requires trust.
can backfire immensely. People have already tried and failed.
There is no intrinsic problem with trust. On the net you are potentially connected to everyone on the planet. Nobody can claim the trust of everyone. And I firmly believe achieving this is the wrong goal.
People need to simple not let their trust be abused and that is very possible. For example not letting ad companies handle your biases or believing the next random spam mail you get.
Anonymity is a tool to shield you from abuse. Not the only one, but for non-public personas, nobody has found something better yet.
If you keep looking for new predators, everybody will look like one at some point. Because you have let your trust be abused and have none left.
If I'm not mis-remembering, there's an interesting section in Dawkins' The Selfish Gene about cooperative grooming behavior (I think it was in some sort of water fowl) and how the birds deal with cheating behavior (individuals that accept grooming without reciprocating). My takeaway was roughly: Any exchange of value based on trust is exploitable. The simplest cure is excluding the exploiter, but this doesn't scale w…
It's true that "The Selfish Gene" has been a science-based classic of evolutionary biology for over 40 years. But it's also true that in those 40 years a lot of studies have taken aim at the central arguments of the book and in my opinion cast serious doubt on the accuracy of the books conclusions (Or perhaps limit the scope of those views as being a projection of western culture - but not of all cultures on earth, p…
Can we trust the article that it is the internet that is becoming low trust, or is it reflecting society's trends? Trust has been fading in societies for decades [1] and apparently millenials are the most cynical [2] https://ourworldindata.org/exports/trust-attitudes-in-the-us... https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/files/2014/... First, the internet has opened up, and its prominent platforms (which were…
Where is the footnotes?
At probably a naive glance it seems related to anonymity. Would tying identity to online posts increase this trust? What if you had to insert your National ID Card to comment in some feedback forums? I remember YouTube tried this and failed due to pushback. What's the driver of this clickbait/instant gratification/hot take culture that's developing? Is it just ads?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This goes beyond trust, I think. The social structures of Internet communities are very different from those those in real life, and I'm highly disturbed when people try to transplant IRL social norms to the Internet thoughtlessly. This is where we get bone-headed ideas like the real-names policy for "the Internet". Now, I am not discounting that there is actually toxic, horrific harassment that goes on the Internet.…
> A good example of this is how a lot of people and media take 4chan posts at face value, without realizing that a lot of it is completely self-aware But a lot of it is not, and a fair number of people do become indoctrinated to alt-right ways of thinking through that sort of medium, some of them going as far as murder. I'm not saying "Ban this sick filth!" but I am increasingly of the opinion that such places should…
(I have a whole separate argument on how I think the problem may be that the progressive movement has simply assumed that it has won the cultural war, and has stopped making effective arguments for itself, which inadvertently leaves room for alt-right type movements that are still actively recruiting and promoting themselves - e.g. the so-called "red pilling".)
As it should be, I think. You don't inherently trust stranger on a street, you shouldn't do that on the internet as well.
While I wouldn't trust a random stranger on the street with e.g. my money or private data. However, I have no problem trusting them to honestly and truthfully answer questions like "how do I get to X from here?" or "here, can you please mark my bus ticket in that marking machine over there and hand it back to me? I can't quite reach it in this crowded bus".
On the internet, however, I don't trust a random stranger (e.g. a youtube commenter, or a reddit user) with answering "2+2" correctly, let alone with something that involves my possessions, no matter how low-value they might be.
If I'm not mis-remembering, there's an interesting section in Dawkins' The Selfish Gene about cooperative grooming behavior (I think it was in some sort of water fowl) and how the birds deal with cheating behavior (individuals that accept grooming without reciprocating). My takeaway was roughly: Any exchange of value based on trust is exploitable. The simplest cure is excluding the exploiter, but this doesn't scale w…
This is the most intelligent take on internet trust issues that I've seen. The conclusion is overly glib though: it took centuries for high-trust societies to develop the mechanisms that allow them to function as such, and even small changes can upset that balance (as we've been seeing in the real world over the last couple of years). We shouldn't assume it will be trivial to bootstrap those kinds of institutions on…
People forget that institutions take time to develop. They also forget that high-trust institutions frequently begin with a dictator. The end-point is high-trust/low-coercion, but you can't get there from low-trust/low-coercion. First you have to go through a high-trust/high-coercion state, after which you can gradually taper off the coercive elements as institutions mature and the individual actors get used to the n…